Bridezilla?

Reposted from my wedding story.  For more great love stories, head over to Rachel's for Meetings, Marriages, and Memories.

Leading up to the wedding, I had several people comment about my bridezilla status. One friend even commented that I could potentially be the worst bridezilla in the history of the world, or at least she’s ever seen. While part of me was offended by the comments, I have to say that the assumptions were based on fact.


While I’m not proud of it, I do have an explosive temper. More than one hair brush has been beaten against the side of cabinet when I couldn’t get my hair to suit me. I’ve even cried for weeks about a bad hair cut (as a matter of fact I’m just now getting one grown out from bad in January). And then there was the cheeseburger incident…although I’ll still swear that I was provoked. So the possibility of the diva in my coming out was quite likely.

With 5 months till the ceremony I picked out a $25 dress at TJ Maxx for my bridesmaids. I also approved a hand-me-down dress that my niece’s baby sister had from a wedding her daughter was in. “Run with it now before I change my mind.” As easy going as I was at first, I thought there would come a point where I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. Thankfully for all involved, that never happened.

I never met in person with my baker. I just picked out a couple of pictures of the internet and said “make it look something like this”. When they asked for specifics, I told them that I wanted strawberry cake with buttercream icing. With any other questions, from them as well as other vendors my common response was “You’re the professional. I’m sure you know better than I would.”

I thought that the stress and anxiety would kick in with a month to go. But it didn’t. Then a week. Nope, no stress, just a little excitement. Surely the day before I would start to get anxious/nervous/cranky/hateful. Ordinarily I would credit the mimosa, but since that wasn’t until later on the evening of the rehearsal dinner, that couldn’t be it.

The only sign of nerves was Thursday night/Friday morning. I woke up at about 3 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. I consider myself an organized person, and I have an infatuation with lists. Going over the Friday to do list in my head, I had difficulty going back to sleep. There was that stack of laundry to put away and packing to do. Rather than lay in bed and waste precious hours, I got up and started on my tasks.

About 15 minutes into my chores, my mother knocked on my door. She has sleeping problems on a regular basis, so I was glad to see a sympathetic face. Until she told me to be quiet and go back to bed.

Thankfully, shortly after that my sister got up to feed my nephew and invited me to go out into the living room with her and the little man. She said she would have come and talked to me sooner because she thinks there isn’t anything worse than being awake and alone in the middle of the night, but she thought my mom getting up was to make me feel better.

Once the day got started, the nerves subsided and I finished off my checklist. My sister and I headed into town to get relaxing pedicures, and I got my nails done so they would look like their ragged selves for the pictures the next day. Then we headed to work to drop of some items for the reception with a friend/coworker. She is the queen of organization and event planning and so as I had in the past, I deferred to her professional opinion.

The plan was to meet my parents, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew at the rehearsal dinner site and all ride to the rehearsal site together. (We got married in the National Park, so it was a bit of a drive). Rehearsal was to start at 4, so we decided to meet at the restaurant at 2:30 to give us plenty of time.

2:50 my mom called.

They were still at the tux shop, as were Jay and his parents. The shop insisted they try on their tuxes before they picked them up. Good thing, because my future father-in-law popped a button on his trousers and my brother-in-law’s shirt sleeves would have properly fit a midget. Also, they had set aside white shirts, rather than the ivory I had requested, so the ivory shirts weren’t pressed.

My father, the expert negotiator, said that my mom would press the shirt if they would toss in a garter for free. The garter was a last minute purchase because I had misplaced the original. Not sure if my mom agreed to the deal, but like it or not they were in there car on the way.

In the mean time, my sister took me in CVS to show me her mad drug store deal shopping skillz. I got free and more than free stuff there all the time. I was not impressed with her two calming lemon waters and two chocolate bars purchase. “You mean CVS actually makes people pay for things???”

My parents finally arrived only we couldn’t leave until the princess went potty. My mom waltzed into the restaurant asking for the bathroom. “We’re not eating here now, but we will be later.” After a strange look from the hostess, she explained that we would be coming back for the rehearsal dinner. “We never got a final number. Is the bride with you? We need to talk to her.”

No really you don’t.

At this point I was more frustrated than anything. I had nothing to do with the rehearsal dinner, so I didn’t know numbers or menu or any other of their nitpicky questions they had. I gave them my soon to be mother-in-law’s cell phone number and suggested they call her with any questions.

Still not anxious. Maybe concerned that the preacher would actually be on time for the rehearsal and wonder where we were. But never anxious or nervous. The remainder of the night was a breeze. We walked through the wedding order several times and then headed to the rehearsal dinner. The food was wonderful and I think everyone had a great time.

Logistically Jay and I had figured that he would need to drive my car to the house, so that Sunday morning it would be there for us to leave for the honeymoon. I double checked that my honeymoon bag was in my trunk. My only mistake was not checking to see if I got everything OUT of the car that I needed.

Half way home I realized that he had the wedding bag.

The bag with everyone’s folders.

The bag with the marriage license.

The bag with my “to do” lists.

Being a control freak, it was hard to know that someone else was responsible for something so important. Thankfully, I had already given my sister and mother their folders, and they had copies of everything (marriage license excluded) that we needed.

Were I bridezilla, I would have demanded that he bring the bag to me. I decided that if I couldn’t trust him with this one detail of the wedding, how was I going to trust him with the rest of my life? Amazingly enough, I slept better that night.